Sticky Fingers and Chaos
by Lucillia
Summary: In which the Chancellery Guard Andred falls in love one day, and discovers that his beautiful savage comes with a bit of black-haired, green-eyed baggage.
1. Prologue: Joining the Wrong Family

Dumbledore winced slightly as he gave the small bundle on the doorstep of the Dursley home one last glance. Personally, he thought the lullaby blankets that were so popular these days bordered on child abuse, but if his suspicions proved correct, a blanket that forced a kid to sleep until it was removed was going to be the least of the poor boy's worries. With the boy wrapped in it, there was no way he could wander off, and the warming charms on each blanket were advertized to withstand Arctic temperatures, so there was no risk of the child dying of hypothermia before Harry's aunt brought him into the house and sealed the contract that would keep the boy's blood protection intact until he was of age. Heatstroke maybe, but not hypothermia.

"Good luck." he whispered to the boy who he might have to lead to an untimely demise for the safety of the world, especially if Tom got too big for his britches and pissed off the wrong being. But, when one life was weighed against billions, there was only one right answer. Cruel, but right.

"You're going to need it." Dumbledore whispered as he apparated away.

Not ten seconds after Dumbledore had departed, a rather peculiar sound echoed across Privet Drive and the surrounding neighborhood. A sound which sent one man leaping out of bed and searching for his clothes. Not out of fear of discovery by a spouse, as he was the spouse in this case, but because that sound usually heralded trouble. As the sound faded, a blue police box was standing where there hadn't been one before. Moments after the police box appeared, a brown haired woman in leather emerged and began exploring the area.

Less than two minutes later, there was a yell of "Leela! Put that baby back!"

The Doctor should've already known it was futile since the woman in question only listened when she wanted to. How she'd become his companion should've made that clear.

Fortunately for Harry, the Sevateem were distantly descended from the Evans family through one Dudley Dursley. Unfortunately for Harry, he was going to be raised by people who had rather odd ideas when it came to child-rearing. Partially because one of those people had belonged to a tribe of what the residents of Privet drive as well as the rest of society would've called savages, and partially because the other and the family he belonged to were aliens who hadn't actually had to deal with children for generations because they'd used the Looms which spat out full-grown adults rather than gone through the messy process of childbirth which seemed so primitive to them.


	2. Unexpected Fatherhood

The Doctor sighed as he assembled the K-9 unit he'd originally purchased in case the original K-9 became broken beyond repair. He'd originally gotten it for Leela since she was rather fond of the metal dog, but the Artificially Intelligent creature had rather grown on him, and he'd found himself pulling it out of storage for himself because he didn't want to be completely alone. There had been a price for escaping the Presidency of Gallifrey which he'd never wanted in the first place, and that price had become rather obvious in the absence of innocent yet intelligent questions and the lack of tiny hands trying to filch things from his pockets.

He had somehow fallen into the role of surrogate father for Leela who had lost her own shortly before they met, and all children have to grow up sometime, though it hurts when you realize that they've finally done so. Leela had made her choice however, and as he'd said more than a dozen times when he was trying to get Leela to put little Harry back on the doorstep where he belonged until his new family acknowledged and accepted him by bringing him inside completing the contract that would secure the protection that had been placed on the child, the TARDIS was no place for a baby. He would miss the two of them like he did all of his companions, but it was better that they moved on with their lives before he was forced to either watch them die during one of the adventures he always found himself in the middle of, or watch them die of old age long before he himself could pass on.

As he adjusted the crystal that made up part of the new K-9's brain, he smiled slightly. He'd told Leela that there was no such thing as magic, and it technically true from a certain point of view. A pair of Twentieth Century Science Fiction authors had nailed it with their laws about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, and sufficiently analyzed and categorized magic being indistinguishable from science. Like K-9, the Time Lords were excellent examples of both, and since they had evolved differently in that area and taken things in a different direction from say the Humans and the Carrionites, they were going to be in for an interesting time when little Harry got older.

Until Leela had brought Harry on board, he had almost forgotten what it was like to have a small child around for more than a few hours at a time. It had been very trying as well as very rewarding, and setting aside and decorating a nursery for the first time since Susan's birth had been fun. Especially since he'd been given a free hand in the design and was allowed to draw on several worlds and time periods for inspiration. Child-proofing the TARDIS had not been fun however, neither had changing diapers, nor his attempts at early toilet training. The fact that Harry had been deeply traumatized by what had happened to him, and the fact that a foreign consciousness which had had to be carefully removed had invaded the boy's own had made things more difficult in the beginning. But, since humans didn't consciously remember everything, Harry began to move on from the event which had left him and orphan, and ultimately ended up with him in Leela's rather inexperienced care.

Sometimes he wondered if something out there had pulled strings in order to bring the one individual aside from the Dursleys who could've taken Harry in and left the protection contract that kept the boy as safe from his enemies as it possibly could intact to the right place and the right time. Who or whatever it was, he now had it to thank for the fact that there was one more person he'd miss, one more person he'd have to refrain from visiting too often lest the temptation to snatch them back from the lives they built after parting from him became too strong. The fact that mammals are serial adopters that can and will raise the young of other species just made things worse, since a part of him had marked Harry as his child in the few short months he'd been aboard the TARDIS.

* * *

On Gallifrey, a young Time Lord named Andred was trying to sort out what he was going to do next. His week had started ordinarily enough, but by the end of it, he'd found himself married to an alien and becoming a father without any prior warning. Had the child he was now father of come out of the Looms, dealing with his unexpected paternity wouldn't have been as big an issue. The thing was, he was he was now father to a child, an alien child, and he didn't even know where or how to begin.

He had seen children before. There were a handful of them on Gallifrey, mostly born in the wastelands or on the outer estates where the people were strange, and he'd attended the Academy with a small knot of them who tended to keep themselves to themselves. But, he'd never seen one so young before, not in real life. Not until The Doctor who had briefly been Lord President until he'd suffered from a case of amnesia that had been a result of an injury incurred during the recent invasion had retrieved the small creature from his nursery which had been locked down when the Sontarans had invaded and departed in his capsule, leaving it behind with Leela.

There had been a time when the Time Lords had been sterile, and the Looms had been a godsend, but scientists had long since figured out and corrected the genetic anomaly that prevented reproduction. Most families still used the Looms in order to expand however, since actual childbirth was considered to be a primitive process, and due to the lack of Quality Control the results tended to be...unpredictable. The Doctor, The Master, and The Rani were prime examples of this.

The small creature his new wife Leela was holding however was not a child of Gallifrey. It was a child descended of primates that had swung from the trees of an alien world rather than creatures that had made their way out of the ancient seas of this one. This made it doubly alien to him.

It wasn't uncommon for Time Lords to marry on the day they met. Time Lords knew their own minds, and two of them could determine whether they were compatible or not within the space of a couple hours. Of course, background checks could be run in under five minutes, and one could normally have a history of one's potential spouse from the moment they were born at hand if one was so inclined. He however had rather impulsively made his decision to marry while knowing virtually nothing about his new wife's history, and Leela had forgotten to mention she had a child during their interactions. Discovering that he'd become a father the instant he'd married Leela had been quite the shock.

Explaining this, and the decisions that led up to it to his family was going to be very difficult. Of course, the last few days had been full of strange happenings, so his family probably wouldn't be as surprised as they would normally be, especially since he wasn't the only one in the family who'd made a sudden life-changing decision that day. His uncle who'd been thrown out during Kelner's purge of his enemies had decided not to return to the Citadel after the invaders had been repelled and the traitorous Castellan had been dealt with, choosing instead to live out in the wastelands with that odd band of Luddites.

As he stood there contemplating a future he couldn't have even imagined a few days before, the child that his new wife Leela was holding started making a whining noise.

"What's wrong with it?" he nervously asked his wife.

"He's hungry." Leela replied.

His mind briefly went blank after that statement. Nobody went hungry on Gallifrey. At least not in the Citadel they didn't. Then, he remembered that his wife and her child had not yet been issued rations, and it would be up to him to feed them until they were. After fumbling for his nutrient tablets which probably weren't the best choice since they were made for a Time Lord metabolism but were the only option, he pulled one out and handed it to the child who looked at it curiously with strange green eyes before putting it in his mouth.

Moments after the baby swallowed the tablet dry, there was a noise as if it was choking and its respiratory bypass had failed to engage. As he raced for a medical kit, wondering exactly what he'd done wrong and whether or not he might've just accidentally killed his step-son along the way, Leela did something and suddenly the food tablet was on the floor, and the baby was screaming.

_Great, _he thought as he stood by the med-kit helplessly. _I haven't even been a father for ten minutes and I've messed up already._


End file.
